1991: THE FAT BOY CONNECTION

Because I edited and published the Blue Paper from the first issue in January 1994 until my retirement last year, one of my assignments as a columnist for the new Blue Paper on line is to periodically go back and dredge up some of the more bizarre stories we published back in the old days. One of the biggest scandal stories Key West The Newspaper was covering back in 1996 and 1997 was then-City Manager Julio Avael’s continuing vendetta against then-Police Chief Ray Peterson– despite the fact that Peterson was one of the most popular police chiefs in the city’s history.

But Avael had been virtually ordered to fire Peterson by then-Mayor Dennis Wardlow, supported by several other “Bubba” city commissioners. You see, they blamed Peterson for calling in the FBI to investigate corruption in city government and that investigation had resulted in the indictment of Mayor Wardlow. The mayor was subsequently acquitted. But payback is a bitch. Avael concocted a dozen or so charges against Peterson and the chief was eventually forced to retire– although his settlement included a letter noting that all charges against him were unfounded.

Although the allegation that Peterson had called in the FBI was the catalyst for the eventual forced-retirement of the chief, the genesis of the bad blood between Wardlow and Peterson may been an incident that occurred back in 1991. In our April 4, 1997 issue, we headlined that story “The Fat Boy Connection.” Peterson had just been named police chief by then-City Manager Felix Cooper. One of Peterson’s first actions was to promote several police officers, including the promotion of Sgt. Al Flowers to lieutenant. Mayor Wardlow reportedly went ballistic when he heard about the Flowers promotion.

“He called me and chewed me out,” Cooper said, “demanding to know why I had not cleared the promotion with him in advance. Primarily, he was unhappy that Flowers had been promoted, rather than Sgt. Jeff Berman. I told him that I was not aware that the mayor had to approve police promotions.”

Jeff “Fat Boy” Berman was one of Mayor Wardlow’s closest friends. Reportedly, the mayor often did late night ride-alongs with Berman. And it wasn’t long before Berman was, indeed, promoted to lieutenant. But Berman never liked Peterson being chief of police and he was not shy about letting his fellow officers know it. In fact, Berman thought that he should be chief and it was known that Mayor Wardlow supported that idea.

When Peterson disciplined Berman for publicly criticizing fellow police officers, local attorney John “Mad Dog” Bigler and former City Attorney Joe Allen III were sent to ‘splain reality to Peterson. “Get off Fat Boy’s butt,” they told Peterson,” or you’ll be looking for a new job!’

(Just to give you some background on the players here: It would not be long before Bigler would lose his credentials to practice law and leave the country after getting caught bribing Mayor Wardlow. Wardlow would beat the bribery indictment but would be found guilty by the Florida Ethics Commission on the same charges and ordered to pay a big fine. Joe Allen III would fail at a second run to become city attorney after it was learned that he had recently settled a big malpractice suit.)

Jeff Berman’s fantasy to become police chief collapsed when he was caught “double dipping”– handling nighttime security at a local hotel while on the police department timeclock. The state attorney told Berman that he could avoid criminal charges if he would resign and give up his law enforcement credentials. At first, Berman refused to resign. He apparently thought that his City Hall connections would protect him. But when investigators learned that the paychecks from the hotel had been made payable to Wardlow’s brother and that Berman’s wife (who worked at a local bank) had been cashing the checks for her husband, they told Berman that they were going to arrest his wife. Berman quickly resigned.

But apparently Berman was able to use his connections to stay on the city payroll. For awhile, he drove a city bus. Then, City Manager Avael gave him a job in Code Enforcement. When Avael was asked by Key West The Newspaper how he could justify hiring a disgraced law enforcement officer as a code enforcement officer, he said, “Because nobody else applied for the job.” (A few years later, Avael was forced out of city government when the city commission refused to give him a new contract.)

One of Berman’s jobs in Code Enforcement was to bust citizens who were running businesses without occupational licenses. But when The Blue Paper caught him renting out his own property without an occupational license, he told City Manager Jim Scholl that he didn’t know he had to have one.

The Fat Boy Chronicles came to an end when Berman finally retired in 2009.